Many
fans of Harrison Ford know nothing about this, his most intriguing,
challenging and disturbing film. The precursor, both visually
and conceptually, of a host of other similar films, Blade
Runner’s influences are apparent in such movies
as The Terminator, Matrix, Men in Black,
and even Basic Instinct.

Originally
released in 1982, Blade Runner is science fiction and fantasy
set in Los Angeles in the year 2019, which, being only two
U.S. presidents away, isn’t that far off from today

The
film explored cloning and genetic engineering long before
we saw how these things were truly possible. Human clones
are called “replicants” in Blade Runner,
and they are so much like their human models that they are
easily mistaken for them. The telltale difference is that
replicants are incapable of emotion. They are identified by
their eyes, which are examined for signs of empathy while
the suspect listens to a brief anecdote that illustrates pain
or disappointment in human life—something that recalls,
for me, TV depictions of investigators interviewing serial
killers.

The
plot begins with a group of replicants staging a brief but
violent uprising on an outer colony far from earth, and then
returning to earth against regulations. At this, the Big Daddy
government decides to send “blade runners,” or
assassins, to hunt them down and “retire” them.
As replicants try their best to blend in with normal humans,
the blade runner Deckard—Harrison Ford— tries
desperately to find them. It isn’t exactly murder, or
even wrong, to kill those who are not quite human—or
is it?
This is very much an adult film. The violence is serious,
especially toward the end, and there are brief moments of
female nudity. But most of all, the entire mood of the film
is intended to disturb.

The
script was created from a story by the amazing science fiction
novelist of the 1950s and 60s, Philip K. Dick. The Library
of America has just begun reissuing Dick’s novels in
their gorgeous and durable black dust-jacketed editions. Go
and read them, and see how prescient this novelist was. Or,
simply watch this film again, or for the first time. The
issues of genetic engineering, what makes us human, the meaning
of life, and the self-alienation so easily felt in postmodern
society are all present here.

In
this, the 25th year since Blade Runner’s release, director
Ridley Scott (Alien, Thelma and Louise,
Gladiator) has created a new director’s cut
of the film and released it to very select theaters across
the U.S. Back in the summer of 1982, the big hit was Steven
Spielberg’s E.T., another film about alien life, except
a whole lot cuter.

I
was able to view Blade Runner, The Final Cut in Manhattan’s
enormous Ziegfeld Theater, in a room that looked like the
old, lavish days of the Ziegfeld Follies. There, Blade
Runner appeared wilder than ever before. The incessant
rain and dreariness of the Los Angeles sky convey a disdain
for life, whether human or replicant. The music, too, is dreary,
composed by Vangelis, the artist who won the Academy Award
for the soundtrack to Chariots of Fire the year before
Blade Runner. There’s
little hope in this movie, but the implications and questions
that it prods are endless, and relevant.

Ridley
Scott’s vision of the future appears to include diverse
religions; Hare Krishnas and Orthodox Jews are visible in
crowd scenes at night in rainy Los Angeles. At one point in
the film, a replicant sarcastically says to Deckard, “I
think, therefore I am!” Descartes’ mantra is intended
to provoke the discussion, or beg the question, “Is
deduction what makes us most human?” Translated into
the context of spiritual conversation, this might better be,
“Is our ability to empathize with our fellow humans
the thing that defines us?”

If
you are unable to see this Final Cut on the big screen, you
can at least buy it in DVD or Blu-ray when it’s released
this December. My only real complaint, seeing this film again
after so many years, is that most of the actors in it are
what we’d probably call B actors who have, since 1982,
populated a lot of B movies—such as Tango and Cash,
Ace Ventura Pet Detective, among others. But their
performances don’t seem poor, so much as they seem bizarre,
and I’m sure that is exactly what Ridley Scott had in
mind. Once you see it, you may find yourself debating with
friends, just as the men were in the men’s room at the
Ziegfeld afterwards, “Was Deckard himself human or replicant?
How would we know the difference?”